Twitter Bootstrap and WordPress Theme Frameworks

If you haven’t yet you should make some time to read Building Twitter Bootstrap at A List Apart. Especially if you’re interested in building a WordPress Theme Framework or WordPress Starter Theme.

Twitter Bootstrap is essentially a collection of HTML-CSS templates and some Javascript put together to “help designers and developers quickly and efficiently build awesome stuff online.” It sounds an awful lot like a lot of WordPress Theme Frameworks and Starter Themes, right? It looks like one too.

It also reminds me a lot of the advice I’ve been giving people lately on using Theme Frameworks, Starter Themes, and Child Themes. Eventually I wind up saying the same thing over and over again: You should be building your own WordPress Theme Framework. Take the WordPress Default Theme, take an existing WordPress Theme Framework, or a Starter Theme, or any old theme that works, and make it your own. Iterate on it, build on it, refine it. Use it as Parent Theme or a Starter Theme. Make it your own. When you’re done you’ll have the best WordPress Theme — for you. And really that’s what you really want in the end.

But back to Building Twitter Bootstrap. If you’re interested in building your own WordPress Theme Framework there is some great advice in that article. Check out the Twitter Bootstrap project and think about building your own Theme Framework, Parent Theme, or Starter Theme.

Rachel, this is pretty amazing. I’ve worked on wordpress and bootstrap (Which I think rocks!) on separate occasions but never thought about putting it together. It’s also very kind of you for sharing it.
Thank you!

Rachel, your Bootstrapwp theme is very nice. I plan to make a personal boostrapwp theme based on the Twenty Eleven/Twelve framework (because is full HTML5 with article, header, footer etc elementes) form WordPress 3.4 and I will look at your example.

@Rachel – I did one of these too – http://320press.com/wpbs. Definitely a fun project to put the twitter bootstrap framework into a wp theme. I also did a theme based on Zurb’s foundation – http://320press.com/wp-foundation – which I actually liked a little better than the bootstrap framework (before they released 2.0)

My understanding is that you CAN use bootstrap with a re-released version of wordpress if it is released under a V3 license, but you cannot use it with a copy of wordpress that comes directly from the wordpress foundation (aka wordpress.org) as they are licensed under V2.

NOTE: that this is my understanding, i am not a lawyer. i’ve sent a letter to the FSF asking them to clarify it for me before i release my own theme which uses code from bootstrap and anyone reading this should do the same.

I guess they are compatible:
From http://wordpress.org/about/license/ :
“The license under which the WordPress software is released is the GPLv2 (or later) … so, This “later” can be GPLv3 ins’t it? , I think it does, and GLPv3 and Apache2 are compatible.

According to a core drupal dev on twitter in response to the
twitterbootstrap + drupal theme licensing question
“@crell Apache2 is not GPLv2 compatible, only GPLv3. Not allowed on drupal.org but you can use it yourself w/ GPLv3”

I spent some time integrating Bootstrap into several WordPress themes, one of which I give away for free on my website. I also made some WordPress shortcodes that use the Bootstrap styles and awesome functionality. Check it out here: http://strappress.com